


Roche’s Mom (Has Got It Goin’ On)

by dread_thehalfhanded



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Daddy Issues, Everyone loves a good awkward conversation over tea, F/M, Implied Roche x Foltest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27530038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dread_thehalfhanded/pseuds/dread_thehalfhanded
Summary: It starts awkward enough. Meeting your mother's boyfriend is no one's idea of a good time, but when it turns out to be your weird quasi-nemesis? No thanks.But Roche likes his mom and trusts her judgement, sorta, so he grits his teeth through afternoon tea and refuses to look at the smug bastard sitting at the head of the table. His one contribution to the conversation is to ask how long they've been seeing each other.It is a mistake.
Relationships: Iorveth (The Witcher)/Original Character(s), Iorveth (The Witcher)/Original Female Character(s), Iorveth/Roche's Mom
Comments: 14
Kudos: 36





	Roche’s Mom (Has Got It Goin’ On)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kerasines](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerasines/gifts).



> This disaster is dedicated to the Witcher Rare Pair server, and to @kerasines for the tweet that inspired it all.

When Eliza had asked him to meet her new partner, he’d said yes. When your mother is a career strumpet, now an estimable matron at one of the most respectable brothels in Novigrad, you get over the idea of your mother and sex involved in the same sentence pretty fast. She’s good at what she does, it is what it is, so what? Everyone does it, she’s better at it than most. Bragging rights, when you looked at it in a certain light.

But he didn’t, mostly.

 _Really? Good for her_ , was about all the thought he gave to the letter, when it came.

Now, standing on her doorstep and faced with the reality of meeting his 50-something mother’s paramour, Vernon Roche felt something like regret. Trepidation. Dread?

Bullshit. He’d been in the army.

He knocked.

In the long moment between the knock and the door opening, he contemplated briefly turning and running like the street urchin he always felt in Novigrad. Growing up picking pockets and running contraband intel for bigger and better men down these same streets never quite left a man. Definitely made him feel a little odd around the city guard.

Just as he shifted his weight to at least make a lap around the block—just a short one, with a trip to the tavern—the door opened.

“Vernon!”

Eliza opened the door beaming, and her hugs and exaltations at his presence swept him inside before he could think too hard about it.

“I’ve missed you! You never write enough—” _hug_ “—and I want to hear all about everything with that witcher man, and your little team—good man, shoes off—”as he tried to take off his boots— “and your friend Foltest!”

At that he did choke out, “Mom, he’s the _king_.”

Why did she have to make everything weird?

“And is he not your friend?”

Technically, yes? He felt the color rise on his cheeks before he could stop it. If you counted close advisor, trusted spy, and occasional- _ahem_ as characteristics of your friends, then absolutely.

“Sure, but he’s still the king!”

 _Pleasedon’tlookatmepleasedon’t_ —

She turned and led the way down the hall to the sitting room without further comment, doing that little sway onto her toes that she did when she got excited. He was grateful that she seemed too wrapped up in her own affair to notice his embarrassment. The hallway was lined with paneled wood, framed pictures, and little bouquets of flowers. Eliza must be doing very well for herself, if she could afford all this.

“I’m so excited for you two to finally meet each other!”

She turned, suddenly, hand on the door.

“Be polite, won’t you?”

Roche gave his mother his best I’ll-do-my-darndest smile. Why would he be rude to someone his mother thought so highly of?

“Of course.”

She opened the door, and let the both into a wide, open room filled with flowers and light, with a single figure sitting daintily on the white divan—

“WhattheFUCK,” he said, voice an octave too high, “Are you doing here?”

Sitting on his mother’s couch, drinking tea from his mother’s china, was Iorveth.

Iorveth, occasionally Iorweth, commander of the last Scoia'tael commandos, Aen Seidhe elf, and royal pain in the ass. Was currently in his mother’s home. With her, and her prospective suitor still on the loose—

“Vernon!” hissed Eliza, tugging on his arm. “Manners!”

She bustled by him and into the sitting area, her skirts catching uncharacteristically against the furniture, and gestured to the elven intruder. Could it really be him?

“Iorveth, this is my son, Vernon. Vernon… this is Iorveth.”

She smiled sweetly down at the elf, as if she couldn’t see the winding scar that cut through half his face, the gouged-out eye, the murderous glare. Just behind them, in the corner with the umbrella stand, Iorveth’s great many-layered bow leaned against the wall along with his curved swords.

 _No_ , Roche thought dully, there could be no mistaking him. 

With careful, precise motions, the elf put his teacup down on the coffee table, and stood, genteelly offering his hand in greeting. Only the barest rise of his eyebrow betrayed his shock, carefully schooled behind a polite veneer that no Temerian would have ever thought him capable of. 

So. This was the suitor. 

Roche took two steps forward, and tripped over the ottoman. In his face-first tumble to the ground, he really, truly hoped he would break his neck.

\---

Unfortunately, Roche did not incur so much as a minor abrasion. The encounter with the rug lasted only a few moments, and he was pulled from his shag haven by his mother’s impatient tug—and by the threat of Iorveth reaching towards him as well.

The shock of that was enough to propel him to his feet.

He blinked at Iorveth, and his mother glared at him, mouth creased in the thin line that meant a reckoning later.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, in a hollow voice that was not his own. 

“Likewise,” intoned Iorveth, politely offering his hand again, as though he had not tried to outright murder him less than a week ago.

They made their way to the tea table in silence.

The last time Roche had seen Iorveth, the elf had swung from a vine into the wagon he and his men had been guarding, snarled a series of elder curses, and kicked him from the wagon as more elves swarmed over the sides. The whole swarm of them had ridden off into the sunset crowing their stupid elf noises and he’d been left in the dust without so much as a drop of blood drawn for his trouble.

He’d been furious for days—and now he was supposed to what, sit down and eat yogurt and pastries with the whoreson responsible?

Seated at the table with a saucer full of dainty finger foods in front of him, Roche occupied his time glaring daggers through Iorveth’s skull, and imagining shoving jelly spoons through his remaining eyeball.

They ate in silence for what felt like ages, both men very determined not to look up from their plates. Eliza, determined as ever to make the best of a tough situation, refused to let this stand.

“Roche, why don’t you tell us what you’ve been up to?”

Roche opened his mouth to say _hunting Scoia’tael_ —

But at that moment, Eliza had reached out for Iorveth’s hand, resting on the lace-covered tabletop. And without so much as flinching, snarling, or cursing, he took it. Their fingers tangled together, and Roche suddenly somehow couldn’t get the words out.

“I—Not much, really,” he said, a garbled snarl of words falling out instead. “The Stripes have mostly been on patrol. Around Vizima, working the swamps, protecting the city.”

Not technically untrue, if you omitted the part where they were protecting the city from Iorveth and his elves, specifically.

“That’s just lovely. And what about you, dear?”

Roche could not suppress a twitch at hearing the endearment applied to his self-appointed nemesis.

“The same, mostly,” said Iorveth smoothly, without a trace of embarrassment. “My unit keeps safe the forests of my people, and takes care that our land does not suffer trespass.”

He met Roche’s gaze with something sad and strained behind his eye. For a horrible moment Roche almost saw his point—but he pushed _that_ thought away before he could look at it for too long.

“Well, I’m very proud of both of you,” said Eliza, surveying the table as though that had cleared anything up. “I’ve had a run of solid business myself since the Black Ones came to town. They’re the politest customers my girls have ever had—including the Temerian army, Vernon. I don’t know what they’re teaching you young men these days, but it isn’t manners. Anyway, with such a run, I’ve had to invest…”

She prattled on for a few more minutes, and Roche took the opportunity to shovel as many scones into his mouth as possible, and glower defensively at Iorveth.

So what if Iorveth was just doing his job, every time he’d fucked up the Stripes? He’d seduced his mother—of all people—and that was unforgivable. Surely. Surely that was unforgivable?

Though Eliza seemed pretty happy about it. In fact, she positively glowed. And Iorveth?

Grudgingly, Roche watched Iorveth listen attentively to his mother discuss the state of her business, nodding at every correct moment with apparently genuine interest.

If he wasn’t truly interested and this was all an elaborate ploy, he had to give it to him—he was _very_ committed. Even Roche couldn’t stay interested throughout one of her long explanations of the impact of conversion rates on the local, uh, _romantic services_ community.

Roche took another scone from the platter, and sighed. Was it too early to start drinking?

The sigh drew Eliza’s attention, and she paused in her detail of Nilfgaardian sex positions—

“Something the matter, Vernon?”

“No ma’am.”

She finished her sentence, and the conversation slid into a slightly more comfortable silence with relative ease.

In the pause, Iorveth selected a small orange from the fruit bowl and began to peel it with long, nimble fingers, each one moving with practiced ease to separate the meat of the fruit from the skin. Each finger slipped along with intention, and if he hadn’t known better—

Out of the corner of his eye, Roche noted Eliza’s gaze fixed on the quick, efficient motion of the elf’s fingers; and he really didn’t want to think about that.

“So, uh,” he coughed, “How long has this been going on?”

He tried not to say it accusatorily.

It was a peace offering, sort of. Iorveth wouldn’t get his approval and he didn’t promise not to murder him but he would at least participate in today. For Eliza’s sake—though the thought of hurling himself bodily through the tearoom window still looked pretty attractive.

At best, he would learn who to blame for this whole affair and wouldn’t have to talk for the next ten minutes. At worst… He had no idea. Today had really set a new threshold for his idea of “worst”.

“Hmm,” mused Iorveth aloud, still irritatingly relaxed about all of this. “We first met many years ago.”

Eliza sighed dreamily.

“Decades, Iorveth, decades!”

He hated the way she drew the elf’s name out, lingering on the first syllable like it was a sweetmeat to savor in the mouth. Iorveth hummed again, and Roche noted nauseatingly that he had begun to stroke the back of her hand with his thumb.

“I met Eliza in Vizima just over thirty years ago, nearly to the day,” said Iorveth. “We met at the well outside the city when she tended one of my archers without hesitation.”

Eliza smiled wider.

“Would have done the same for anyone.”

“Not many can say that. So it was that we met, and we tarried longer than was perhaps appropriate in wartime, but I could not restrain my appreciation—”

Roche cleared his throat pointedly.

“—and so we have seen each other when we can since then, and in the years between. Sometimes I have had to disappear for many years at a time, and still she welcomes me back every time.”

“It was nearly ten years, once.”

The soft, tired sadness in Eliza’s voice was familiar, and Roche had hoped never to have to hear it again. She felt that strongly about him? Damn the elf for being gone that long. He opened his mouth to say as much—

And that was when the whole “Three decades” thing caught up to him.

He choked, although his mouth was distinctly empty of scone.

“When did you meet, exactly?”

Iorveth looked contemplative, as if reaching far back into the excessive recesses of his extensive past. Fucker.

“Roughly 35, 36 years ago.”

“That’s uh, a long time.”

They stared at each other for an uncomfortable moment, and Iorveth just blinked, as if _he_ was the one overreacting. Roche dwelt with horrible, indisputable certainty on the fact that he had just passed his 35th birthday.

Well, not just passed. Roughly three months ago, in fact. And this was an anniversary?

Eliza smiled beatifically at them both.

“True love wins in the end. After many years of secret visits and long silences—you know how the Redanians can be about nonhumans—Iorveth has decided to make things a little more official. He’s planning regular visits, even!”

Roche blinked, wishing himself incapable of discerning human speech. Wouldn’t it be nice to just be a little hedgehog without a care in the world? Or a rabbit. Hell, he’d take a possum at this point.

For the first time in the conversation, even Iorveth turned a little green.

“As I can manage them. I try not to do anything too regularly—” he pinned Roche with a meaningful look, “—lest I become predictable and endanger my men.”

If Iorveth was being cagy, out of some fear that Roche would use the information against him, there was no need. He barely caught the following exchange, still frozen in the moment in time before “36 years” had left Iorveth’s lips.

Eliza’s face fell.

“But you promised—”

“I did, and I meant it. I will be there for each of the… Requested dates—”

Elven blood. He had always wondered if he had elven blood. Iorveth would, in fact, provide his _heirs_ with elven blood. The thought made him more nauseated than he’d previously thought possible.

“Can you make it for midsummer?” asked Eliza, addressing the question to both of them.

Half-elf was a lot, and it didn’t show in his ears, but it would explain his frame, his height, the way he could never seem to put muscle on, the way his mother never wanted to talk about his father—

Roche stood up from the table very suddenly with a scrape of chair against expensive hardwood. Both of the others turned to look at him, startled.

“I’m going out,” he said, barely above a whisper, and was out the door before a single entreaty from Eliza could bring him back.

\---

Roche was well and thoroughly drunk at the tavern in an entirely different part of town before he could think more than one thought at a time, let alone in an order.

He’d thought himself long past the time in his life where it mattered who his father was. Could have been anyone, rich or poor, dwarf or human, elf or monster. Didn’t matter in the least, ‘cept that they didn’t stick around and his mother wouldn’t tell him anything, probably didn’t even know and he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask her again.

But _Iorveth?_

He took several more long draughts until he could hold that thought in his mind without seriously considering clawing his eyeballs from his skull.

The timeline checked out. He wished he could be excited about finally, finally discovering-

“Vernon!”

He blinked, and saw Eliza far too late for action. She was skimming over to his table before he could make a swift and appropriate exit.

She sat down before him, swimming nicely in his vision, and frowned.

“I’m disappointed in you, Vernon.”

“What else is new?” he slurred, hurt. She was the one screwing the elf!

She frowned deeply, the deep crease between her brows drawing an even deeper furrow into her forehead. An idle part of the back of his brain informed him she looked like Foltest for a moment, and he didn’t pause to consider that, either.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew each other?” she said, obviously trying for gentleness.

What?

“You didn’t tell me his name. Or that, y’know,” he gestured broadly at the world at large, “ _elf_.”

One issue at a time.

“I didn’t think you’d take it well.”

That seemed to speak for itself.

Roche sighed, and said, “You realize his face is on wanted posters from here to Vizima?”

Eliza shrugged.

“Humans don’t like nonhumans. Hostility comes and goes. I’ve learned to live with it—and besides, you don’t get far in my line of work by being racist.”

“He’s a terrorist.”

“He makes a mean raspberry tart.”

He stared at her, and she had the decency to blush a little.

“He’s a good man, Vernon. I don’t see what the problem is. You’ve never once had a problem with my liaisons, and especially not when they put food on the table. Now? When I’m old enough to just enjoy myself when I feel like it? Seems a bad time to develop objections.”

She paused to flag down a waiter and order an ale, which seemed as good an opportunity for Roche to bury his head in his hands as any. He didn’t want to do this. Any of it. Dealing with Foltest’s court of spies and sorceresses was better than this.

“Vernon. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

He looked.

“I’m not asking you to like him. But will you come for Midsummer and be decent about it?”

Grunting noncommittally, he ran his fingernail down a gauge in the tabletop. Way to avoid the arachas in the room.

But looking at Eliza’s pursed lips across the table, the real worry in her eyes, he didn’t have the heart to push it further.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, with the full intention of doing his best to never think about this day again, ever.

She smiled hopefully.

\---

Not that he was counting, or anything, but it was three months to the day before that horrible moment in his mother’s tea-room before he saw Iorveth again. He’d not avoided the elf, per se, but he hadn’t run into him for a good long while, if he could help it.

Today, Roche had been out hunting—just deer, not elves, this time—when he saw it. The red scarf, the elegant leap from one tree to another, the proud swagger as he stepped out of the trees: He would know that stupid _mother-fucking_ bastard anywhere.

Best of all, Iorveth was alone, not another elf to be seen as he slunk over to the falls.

Roche grinned. He could end this here and now. Crouched in the underbrush that sat beside the falls, he cocked a bolt, and got ready to shoot.

But knew the moment he lined up his crossbow he was fucked.

Eliza would kill him. And he couldn’t live with the knowledge that he’d—that he’d killed his own—

He couldn’t face that thought either, still.

So, instead of shooting or leaving, he stood up abruptly and strode over to the falls where the elf knelt, scooping water into his palms.

Iorveth started visibly at the movement behind him, at first, but when he saw Roche, he grinned, a horrible little spark of mischief in his eye.

“Hello, Vernon.”

“You bastard,” spat Roche, not even deigning to look at him as he bent at the pool for a drink.

What even was his life? He hated it, whatever it was. Some sick joke, that’s what it was.

“You think I won’t kill you now?” said Iorveth, sounding almost perplexed at his total lack of fear.

The elf rocked back on his heels and stared at him as he splashed in the water, then sat down with a thud. Roche hoped he had an aneurism trying to figure out what he was doing—cause he sure as hell didn’t know.

 _Let him. Let him suffer,_ thought Roche, pulling his boots off with the full intention of sticking his feet in the water.

Iorveth was still staring.

“You won’t kill me,” said Roche, finally. “Mom would be upset.”

That uncontestable truth hung between them for a moment.

Iorveth cleared his throat, and came to sit a respectful few sword-lengths away. Roche noted that his feet too, were now bare. The elf slipped his toes into the cool pond and gazed at the falls with an unreadable expression.

Finally, he turned back to Roche.

“How _is_ your mother?”


End file.
